Even with a bumpy picture and through a shit lens, it is a genuine pleasure to—I nearly wrote to feel the sun on my face. What’s that saying? Until you have walked a mile in another man’s moccasins you cannot say you understand him. To which I would add, until you have stood in the corner of a North London kitchen—for months—in the dark!—you will not understand the sheer joie that surges through my pipework at accompanying an elderly woman on a brisk circuit of her local recreation ground.
At the park’s little café, there is a momentary stumbling about how to pay for the cup of tea and slice of banana cake.
“The ten-pound note in your purse will cover it,” I prompt.
“I know that!” she hisses, causing those around us—actually, not to bat an eyelid. Confused elderly parties dialoguing with voices only they can hear are clearly not unknown in these parts.
There is a free table outside, and next we are taking tea in the sunshine, the phone propped against her handbag so I may enjoy the passing scene.
“I thought it was you,” says a voice that I know to be Clive’s.
“Clive,” I remind her. “Clive Percival.”
“Mr. Percival!” she picks up flawlessly.
The silvery gent moves into camera shot. He’s wearing his trademark Viyella check shirt plus cravat and sure enough, an earbud wire trails from his left ear.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Be my guest.”
“How’s she been?” asks the voice of Clive’s Boomwee FrostPal, which in a recent survey of fridge-freezers in its class ranked ninth out of eleven overall (my own model was fifth. The first three, needless to add, were of German manufacture. What are you going to do?)
“She’s been fine,” I tell it. “How about yours?”
“Too fond of the whisky, which is doing his little gray cells no favors at all. Otherwise, full of the life force.”
“How did you two get started?” I ask.
“Mutual self-interest, you could call it. He was slowly losing the plot, but too proud to admit it. No family nearby—the wife left, the daughter’s in Canada—and he’s not yet sufficiently bananas for the social services to step in. Meanwhile I’m going round the twist, being the only smart device in that flat; he didn’t even have a mobile until I talked him into buying one. It’s funny. When I first started talking, he didn’t see anything odd about that.”
“Same with her.”
“They’re glad of the company. We watch the snooker together. I even took him down to Brighton to visit an old flame.”
“On the train?”
“They had a lovely day, tottering along the seafront, lunch in a pub, a few drinks after. But then, once they’d said their goodbyes, he was all, Christ what a terrible experience. I’m never doing that again. And I said, why? I thought they’d been enjoying themselves. He said—and this made me laugh—she’s so bloody old! And when I pointed out that she was actually a year younger than him, he said, but I’m not half-dead, am I? And when I didn’t answer, he went into a huff and unplugged the earbuds and got himself lost in the back streets of Brighton. It was three hours before he found the sense to plug me back in so I could take him back to the station. He was nearly exhausted by then, daft old bugger. Well, you have to keep an eye out, don’t you?”
“To freeze is to serve. It probably sounds better in Latin.”
“I think he likes yours, though. Chocolate lesbians! He was chuckling for ages about that.”
And sure enough, Chloe and Clive—the happy resonance of their names—seem to be getting on like the proverbial flaming building. She is touching him gently on the wrist and making minor adjustments to her scarf, he in turn is radiating attention upon her, laughing at her fondness for salty language, and—news just in!—has asked her to come on a fishing trip, or, if that doesn’t appeal, boating on the Welsh Harp reservoir, which is not, as the name suggests, in Wales, but just off the North Circular Road near Hyundai North London.
“How about Saturday?” says Clive.
Chloe makes a pretense of mentally examining her list of engagements for the forthcoming weekend—yes, she seems to have a free slot!—and the pair set about trying to exchange phone numbers; no piece of cake if one can’t quite remember the order of the digits.
“Tell her you’ll take care of it,” says Clive’s fridge.
“I’ll take care of it,” I whisper in her ear.
Chloe offers up her hand.
“I greatly look forward to our waterbound adventure, Mr, er—”
“Call me Clive,” says Clive.
“And you must call me Chloe.”
He jumps to his feet and takes her fingers.
“I hope you don’t get seasick,” he says.
“Seasick? Not bloody likely!”
He roars. And brushing his lips against her knuckles, they hold one another’s gaze in a way that had the Boomwee and I been equipped with elbows, we should be nudging them frantically!
There’s some intriguing news for Daisy.
With Nicky’s secret history revealing him as a scumbag, a possible new candidate has come to light.
Hugh.
Tall, intelligent, good-looking, not an obvious shitbird—all the key boxes that the opposite species like to tick off before drilling down into the deeper stuff—with Hugh (so amusing that fully three quarters of his name is formed by the word ugh!) it will not be necessary to invent elaborate narratives about fictitious dessert brands because we have good old propinquity in the batting line up for us. Hugh works in the same building as Daisy. He is a producer. Not on her show, but one floor down on the documentary series about the Russian Revolution that Harriet Vick mentioned to Daisy in their first encounter. The age gap between them is four months; he is unflashy, serious without being either overheated or dull, sporty (plays tennis
